Blogs I Dig: The Mad Fientist

I’m a born skeptic. I question everything and always have. Even as a young child, I remember people trying to indoctrinate me into their beliefs and my brain would question and then usually reject them. Now that I’m older, I’m as skeptical as ever. I am open to new ideas, but you better have pretty good evidence if you are trying to convince me to change.

This is especially true with investing. There is so much bad information, I’ve come to believe that 99.9% of it is worthless and even worse, sometimes harmful. However, I recently read a post that convinced me to change my investing strategy in a very significant way.

A couple years ago, I decided to minimize my pre-tax investing (mostly my 401(k)) in favor of post-tax. The reason being I plan to retire long before I can access my pre-tax investments. However, a post by the Mad Fientist showed me that I could access my 401(k) money ahead of the minimum age. This means that I can maximize my tax savings now, but still get at the money on my own schedule. Its a brilliant strategy with no funny business involved.

But the greatness of the Mad Fientist doesn’t stop there. Here’s another one where the Mad Fientist shows us how to use your Health Savings Account as an investment vehicle. Brilliant! He’s even done all of the research including reading the IRS documentation. Just thinking about reading that stuff makes me sleepy, so I’m glad the Mad Fientist has done it for us.

Need more reasons? Check out the Mad Fientist’s podcast series where he interviews many heavy hitters. All of these are definitely worth a listen. Fire up your music device the next time you’re on the treadmill and give these a listen. I did.

This may or may not be the Mad Fientist

I’ll throw one more reason to read the Mad Fientist at you; he’s a really interesting guy. He’s in his early 30s and is retiring this year. Let me tell you the most amazing part though: He’s exiting the workforce around the same time he graduates with a free master’s degree from one of the finest institutions in the world.

The people in my sphere who earn master’s degrees from fancy schools follow it up with a pay raise and a director position. They never see their children, but they have a new black Audi to park in the driveway after their 12 hour work day. After the Mad Fientist earns his master’s, he’ll be traveling the world. I think the Mad Fientist is the one with the right idea.

Do your portfolio a favor and follow the Mad Fientist. Here is where to find him:

Of course, I couldn’t agree more. The Mad Fientist is definitely a blog that deserves attention! Can we get a campaign going for a Plutus award?Dave @ The New York Budget recently posted…Anatomy of a Chore: How to Motivate Yourself

I don’t remember if came across his blog because of a guest post he did or it was an endorsement from another blogger like here. I am happy that I came across it though. The information will definitely be very useful to me as I begin my investment journey.Micro recently posted…Making the switch to Republic Wireless

Plus one for this. He also wants to make electronic music during his early retirement as well which clearly means he is a cool and interesting guy (and happens to be something I want to do when I get the time as well, most probably not until I manage to quit the day job). Also a good reminder that for some bizarre reason I am not signed up to the blogs feed. Off to remedy that now!theFIREstarter recently posted…The Badass Cookery Class: A Beginners Guide

That would be cool! I meant to post a similar content on your “what am I planning to do in early retirement” post but never got round to it.

And thanks, I liked the sort of mini pun in yours and a few other sites names I came across so tried to think of something similar, so you were in part inspiration for it!theFIREstarter recently posted…How Much are you Wasting on Getting Wasted

After being away from my computer all weekend, it was such a nice surprise coming home to this article in my RSS reader!

The picture you used in the post is amazing and since I haven’t had a haircut in a while and am growing out my beard for winter, my wife informed me the picture is actually more accurate than I probably realize.

Also, I’m glad to hear you think I have the right idea with my master’s degree because as my thesis deadline looms, I’m beginning to wonder why I’m putting myself through all of this when I’m not even going to use the degree for anything so thanks for providing some motivation at such a critical time 🙂

Glad I took a quick read, in the past I think I would have said, I have an HSA(ahead of the game) and use it for the usual medical expenses throughout the year. I have an HSA through my employer and they they contribute in between $200 and $800 at the beginning of the year, then I make small contributions to cover the rest. I thought of this as my “free money” medical version.

In the news to me category, I found out that once your account reaches $1000, you can then manage the remaining funds into a pre-defined set of mutual funds, so I got that going for me.

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